Abu Simbel sits two hundred and eighty kilometres south of Aswan, on the western shore of what was, until 1971, the Nile, and is now Lake Nasser. The two temples that stand there — the Great Temple of Ramesses II and the smaller temple of his queen Nefertari — were carved directly into the sandstone cliff face around 1265 BCE, during the third decade of Ramesses's reign. They have been seen, photographed, written about and copied more than almost any other Egyptian monument outside of the Giza necropolis. The smaller fact, less often noted, is that the temples no longer occupy the cliff face into which they were cut. In the 1960s they were sawn into one thousand and forty-two blocks averaging twenty tonnes each, reassembled sixty-five metres higher up the same hill, and re-encased in an artificial concrete mountain. The two temples we visit today are the same temples, made of the same stone, in the same orientation — and, also, the result of one of the most ambitious engineering operations of the twentieth century.
The original site
Ramesses II ruled for sixty-six years, the longest reign of any Egyptian pharaoh except for Pepi II. The Abu Simbel temples are the southernmost of a string of monuments he built along the Nile to project Egyptian power into the Nubian frontier; they are the most ambitious, both in size and in iconography. The Great Temple has four seated colossi of the pharaoh, each twenty metres high, carved directly out of the rock face on either side of the entrance. The smaller temple, dedicated to Nefertari and the goddess Hathor, has six standing colossi — four of Ramesses, two of Nefertari, all of the same height, an exceptional gesture of royal pairing.
The temples extend deep into the cliff. The Great Temple is sixty-three metres deep from façade to sanctuary; the smaller temple is twenty-eight metres deep. Inside the Great Temple, a large hall with eight Osiride pillars (statues of Ramesses in the dress of Osiris) precedes a pillared antechamber and the four-statue sanctuary. The walls of the great hall carry one of the most famous narrative reliefs in Egyptian art: the Battle of Kadesh against the Hittites, which Ramesses fought in his fifth year. The relief, six metres tall and twenty metres long, is a propaganda set-piece — the king alone in his chariot, the Hittite forces routed — that is, in plain historical terms, partly true and substantially exaggerated.
The 1960s relocation
The Aswan High Dam, begun in 1960, would have flooded the original site of Abu Simbel by 1971. UNESCO launched the International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia in 1959; over the following decade, twenty-two ancient monuments — Abu Simbel, Philae, Kalabsha, the temples of Beit el-Wali, Wadi es-Sebua and Amada among them — were lifted out of the rising flood and reassembled at higher elevations. Abu Simbel was the largest, the most photographed, and the most technically intimidating of these salvage operations.
The plan, devised by a Swedish engineering consortium and overseen by the Egyptian antiquities service, was simple in concept and brutal in execution. Each temple was first protected by an enormous coffer-dam against the rising water. The roofs were reinforced with steel; the façades were sawn into blocks averaging twenty tonnes each (the largest block weighed thirty tonnes); each block was numbered, lifted by crane, and stored on a higher terrace. An artificial concrete dome was constructed at the new elevation. The blocks were reassembled into the same internal geometry, attached to the concrete dome from the back, and the joints between blocks were filled with a sand-coloured mortar that is, today, the only visible difference between the original carving and the reassembled monument.
The solar alignment
The Great Temple was oriented at construction so that, on two days of the year, the sunrise would penetrate the full sixty-three metres of the temple's depth and illuminate three of the four statues in the back-wall sanctuary: Amun-Re of Karnak, the deified Ramesses II, and Re-Horakhty. The fourth statue, Ptah, who is the god of the underworld, remains in shadow. The dates of the alignment, in the original cliff-cut location, were 21 February and 21 October — close to the king's coronation date and to his birthday.
After the relocation, the alignment shifted by one day. The current dates are 22 February and 22 October. The temple opens at 04:30 in the morning on both dates; a crowd gathers in the sanctuary in darkness and watches the beam of sunlight enter at approximately 05:55, walk slowly across the inner sanctuary floor, and reach the back wall over the course of about twenty minutes. The crowd is much larger than the sanctuary; it is in practical terms impossible to be alone with the alignment, but the experience remains striking even with three hundred others present.
The smaller temple
Nefertari's temple, fifty metres north of the Great Temple, deserves equal attention. It is one of the few temples in Egyptian history dedicated jointly to a queen and a goddess (Nefertari and Hathor of Ibshek), and one of fewer still in which the queen is depicted at the same size as the king. The interior holds a large pillared hall with Hathor-headed capitals, painted with scenes of Nefertari making offerings to the deities; the colour preservation, somewhat protected from the elements by the smaller depth of the cliff cut, is unusually fine. The temple is dedicated to Nefertari with the inscription, on the right side of the central façade: A temple of great and mighty monuments, for the great royal wife Nefertari Meritmut, for whom the sun does shine.
How to reach Abu Simbel
Two practical routes: by air or by road. Both originate in Aswan.
The air route uses EgyptAir's daily morning service from Aswan to the small Abu Simbel airfield, forty minutes' flight. Visitors transfer to the temples by bus, spend approximately ninety minutes on site, and return on the early afternoon flight. The whole excursion is a half-day, and is the standard option for visitors with limited time.
The road route runs three hundred kilometres south from Aswan through the desert. The route is now open to private vehicles; it was, until 2018, a convoy-only road for security reasons. Private cars and vans depart Aswan around 04:00, arrive at Abu Simbel by 07:30, spend three to four hours, and return in the afternoon. The drive itself is striking — long, empty, with the lake intermittently visible to the east — and is preferable for the slower traveller.
A third option for those with more time: the Lake Nasser cruise itineraries operated by a small number of vessels (notably the M/S Eugénie and M/S Kasr Ibrim) call at Abu Simbel as part of a three- or four-day route from Aswan, with the boat mooring within walking distance of the temples and the visitor able to be on site at first and last light without the daily crowd.
The temple has been moved, but it has not been changed. The orientation, the depth, the alignment of the sanctuary on the appointed mornings — all are preserved. What survives is what was meant to survive.
Practicalities
- Open 05:00 – 18:00 daily; opens earlier (04:30) on the solar-alignment mornings of 22 February and 22 October.
- Photography is permitted in the open exterior and in the larger halls; no flash, no tripod.
- Allow ninety minutes on a regular visit; three hours on an alignment-day visit.
- An evening sound-and-light programme is offered seasonally and is rotated by language.
- The small Nubian museum at the visitor centre presents the relocation in detail and is well worth thirty minutes.
- Carry water; the desert sun at Abu Simbel is fiercer than at Aswan, and shade on the visitor route is minimal.
Entry verified, October 2025 (solar alignment visit). The desert road from Aswan is open year-round; weather closures are rare and short.